A/N: Well, guys. It's been ahhhhhh 4-ish years? Since I updated this last? I kept thinking, yeah surely the NEXT manga ch will give me the things I need to update this fic, and then a new chapter would drop and give me nothing XD Luckily, I got something to go off of the last few chapters so I figure I'll give everyone two more chapters of Incandescence, at least enough to get out of the past arc and catch up to the present. I'm still interested in seeing where they're going with this fight with Satan that might influence the chs so I don't want to get too far ahead.

Everybody gets some fun character development (I'm looking at you, Shiro) in these next few chapters, so at least Rin doesn't have to worry about that anymore? Then Satan pops up lol Also Yuri is a babe in those black-heeled boots, like how do I get a pair of those–or just her uniform in general :O

I hope Rin is taking beast trainer pointers from his mom, bc she knows her stuff P:

AND MORE IMPORTANTLY SEASON 3 AOEX WAS ANNOUNCED!

Literally stayed up until 3am screaming about it watching the livestream. I thought I was gonna have to sacrifice a limb or two just to get it. I was gonna be on my deathbed and the announcement was gonna give me another 10 years of life lmao So I knew I had to get the next ch of this out. It's been long enough XD

Song of the chapter: Beginning of the End by Cat Pierce

His heart pounded as he traveled through the void, wondering how far along the timeline he'd end up in next–how much time it would give Mephisto to stew over his gift.

Rin opened the door back into Lucifer's chamber again, the conversation he and Shemihaza were having picking up right where he'd left off with Mephisto before they'd gone to Amaimon.

"Oh shit."

He was dead. So very dead.

The only question was when and where the attack would come from.

"If Amaimon has found a body, then this place and its research are still valuable," Lucifer said, though Rin couldn't really find it in himself to focus on the words. "Reconsider closing this facility."

"Please," Lucifer coughed out, voice weak but with the ever-present edge of fanaticism that stained everything he said, "next it will surely be me."

Was it really necessary to hear this part? Rin thought, frozen by the door and strongly debating just getting the hell out before the scene ended and the inevitable happened.

He had a white-knuckled grip on the steel edge, and he'd have dented it if he didn't have half his mind dedicated to keeping his presence under wraps because Lucifer still scared the piss out of him.

His tail curled tighter around his waist and his shoulders tensed, there was only one direction Mephisto could come from.

And there was no way Rin could react fast enough to get through the door to the next scene before he caught him–could he even escape with the key if he wanted to? He had a suspicion that Mephisto could control exactly where and when the key took Rin.

Or, if the key did work it wouldn't matter anyway, he'd just be waiting in the next scene.

Running was pointless.

There was also the possibility that if he used the key before he was ready, it might just take him straight back to this room and into Mephisto's clutches.

A shiver went down his spine.

Samael's clutches, even. Rin couldn't decide if that would be a better outcome or a worse one, licking his lips at the thought of which he'd rather see.

"If not, surely that would be strange," Lucifer trailed off, staring at nothing while Shemihaza watched him in silence, a frown pulling at her mouth.

They were done, he could leave the scene for the next one now.

Or not.

Rin's heart pounded, his body tensing until it felt like something would snap and his breath shivered past his lips, bare wisps hardly disturbing the artificial air of the underground facility.

Claws traced delicate lines over the arteries in his neck.

He'd broken out in a cold sweat, only one thought making it through the panic clouding his mind.

Which one was it?

Mephisto.

Or Samael.

Rin stopped breathing.

A body pressed to his, enveloping him in the mingling scents of Mephisto and Amaimon that had his instincts forcing a harsh inhale through his nose to pick up more of his claims.

"Mephisto," Rin rasped, the name coming out barely more than a whisper.

The claws on his neck stilled, warm fingers burning holes where they rested on his trembling pulse.

If the silence lasted any longer, Rin was going to start doubting his guess.

"Very good, Rin." He couldn't stop the jolt Mephisto's voice right next to his ear sent through him, feeling the edge of a smile against the sensitive shell the reaction caused.

Well, two could play at that game–more, if Rin could just get back to the present and find Amaimon.

A wide smile formed at his next words, though Mephisto wouldn't be able to see it. "Did you like my gift, Mephisto?"

He gasped, flinching at the sound and hoping it wasn't enough to alert Lucifer, as Mephisto tightened his claws around his throat.

His airway wasn't constricted enough that he couldn't breathe but that could change at any moment, Rin knew, his pulse now thundering in his veins

"If you treat my things like that, I might not let you borrow them in the future, Rin," Mephisto said, a hint of a growl in the murmured words that had Rin wanting to push back into the embrace.

The claws at his throat kept him frozen in place.

"I had to use something-ah and I had to get out of there. Unless you wanted me busting through the glass and down into the room with you two," Rin panted out, sight going hazy until he was barely aware of what was going on in the room in front of him anymore, focus totally on the way Mephisto scraped the points of his fangs across the sensitive skin at the back of his neck.

"Hm."

Fangs were replaced by warm lips, though Rin almost didn't feel them through the heat building in his body.

"These excuses all sound like a clever way to divert my attentions, Rin. Is that what you're trying to do?"

Rin had enough control left to grin around his breathless answer to the probably rhetorical question from Mephisto, struggling, though whether it was to pull away or push back into the body crowding against him was up for debate. "Ngh-no, just-ha getting the facts straight before you go and twist them on me."

That earned a short chuckle and another squeeze of hands at his neck, thumbs brushing up the line of his jaw to tilt his head back onto Mephisto's shoulder.

"A valiant effort, Rin, but I have a different hypothesis about your motives that I'd like to run by you," Mephisto said, sending Rin's thoughts scattering as he brought him into range of the crook of his own neck.

Through it all, Rin couldn't see him, gaze now fixed on the cold metal wiring and grates above them as his arms trembled from holding himself still

"You thought you might punish me for making you endure this ordeal and leave me with something to torment me for, as you may have hoped, years while I waited for your next appearance."

"Well," a shrug, "that would have been a sure way to begin to make up for keeping you from-"

Rumbling in his ear filled Rin with the name Mephisto purred there.

"-Amaimon."

"Yes," Rin let his answer hiss out between his fangs, hand clamping hard until the pressure built and welts formed in the steel.

He still smelled like Amaimon.

The breaths he took began to sound like panting as Rin fought to keep still. Everything narrowed to the body at his spine and the thrum of his heart until the world fell away, Rin listening for more of whatever Mephisto would say.

"I shouldn't reward bad behavior, as you're so apt to do to myself and Amaimon," Mephisto continued as if he couldn't feel the effect Rin struggled under.

"I only reward good behavior–and you noticed?" Rin said through his teeth, fangs bared in a smile that felt too wide for his face.

A chuckle went through Mephisto's chest, another caress to Rin's throat with a feather-light glance of his fingers.

"Then, how will you punish bad behavior, Rin?" he murmured. "And how will I punish yours?"

Rin could imagine. He imagined throwing Mephisto down and licking away every trace of Amaimon from his skin. Maybe he would use the tie again, then steal it until Mephisto wanted it back, and he would make Mephisto try to take it from him, or maybe he would return it easily. Rin would even be so helpful as to wind it around his throat for him and pull it tight.

Metal creaked a warning, Rin coming back to himself in a blink at the sound to see his fingers threatening to squeeze a hand-sized hole through the metal.

"Control yourself, Rin," Mephisto said, not making it easy to obey him in the slightest, "or how will you make it through this story?"

Right. He was right. Rin sucked in a shuddering breath, fighting not to acknowledge the scents driving his already heightened instincts into even more of a fit, and wrested control back over himself until he could breathe normally again.

It took a while, Rin forcing himself not to bare his throat further to Mephisto, taking it from the loll he'd fallen into as his fangs slid back into some semblance of normality and he could remove his fingers from the dents they'd pressed to the wall one by one.

"Who's the exhibitionist, huh?" he said, voice rough as he remembered speech and turned to see the innocent smile on Mephisto's face. "Weren't you the one who told me I shouldn't let Lucifer see me?"

Thinking about it sent a shiver through Rin, remembering those dangerous green eyes finding him from across the room, and picturing all of Lucifer's madness snuffing him out in an instant. Without his say, his gaze fell to the figure on the cot and his pulse tripped, fluttering in his chest. Would Lucifer notice his presence? Had he heard the racing pulse Mephisto had stirred up?

The hands keeping him still tugged him from the door, Rin gasping as Mephisto jerked him around so he no longer saw into Lucifer's room, the memory of leaf green eyes replaced by Mephisto's deeper hue.

"Why don't we move to the next scene, hm?" Mephisto said with a bright flash of fangs while Rin tried to orientate himself from the mood swing. He was doing it again. The mercurial way Mephisto had begun to act ever since their talk in his office hadn't left, just kept changing faster than Rin could keep up.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll see you soon," Rin said, doing what he did best and pushing forward. Trying to untangle whatever was going on with Mephisto as he was now would only lead to more confusion.

He left the scene to a gaze boring into him, and entered the next with Mephisto's presence already there, though Rin didn't have any time to startle as the sight of one of the Shiro-not-Shiro clones drifted in the tubes he'd seen from the lookout.

Up close, the clones were even worse.

"Hm? We've returned to the previous time," Mephisto said at his side, casual and hands loosely clasped at his lower back. The earlier mood swept away as they returned to business as usual, for a given definition, because nothing about Rin's life could be said to be usual.

"Is this guy another test subject?" Rin murmured, staring at the closed eyes and wondering if the clones dreamed in that state. If they were aware at all.

An eye cracked open and Rin froze as the iris flickered blue, a red pupil in the center looking down at him from under shifting hair.

Familiar eyes.

"Satan?" Rin fought the adrenaline racing through his heart, fists clenching until his gloves creaked with the strain and vision tunneling on the sight.

Before his reaction faded, the clone's eye closed, a slow-motion as if the clone were barely aware, and opened to reveal a normal, human, eye that Rin would recognize anywhere as Shiro's.

"Did I," he breathed, getting his body under control, "did I imagine it?"

"No, it's true," Mephisto cut in easily, "this was the first time Satan took a body."

The first time. For now, the human in that tube was still free. Though free would be a stretch, given where he was.

"The possession was unstable," Mephisto kept on, a light smile on his face that didn't tell Rin anything, but made him feel like he read from a book he'd long memorized. "And no one noticed whether it was human or demon."

"It wasn't like with Amaimon?" In his head, Rin replayed the immediate way Amaimon fit into his vessel, the way his features overtook any semblance of the human it was before like a glove he slipped on. As violent as the possession had been, he knew the second he'd seen it that Amaimon belonged there. He shuddered the same way he'd done before and tried to move on.

"Satan didn't have an ego, so he was still learning the rules of the road," Mephisto said, shrugging at Rin's question.

So much of what Rin learned about demons went right over his head. It made sense that Satan being so young wouldn't know how to possess a body, but the concept of Satan, of any of the kings, being mindless and formless things who could gain consciousness at seemingly any random moment just made his head hurt. Maybe a philosopher-type who always contemplated deeper questions about the universe could unravel some of what Mephisto talked about, but Rin struggled with it.

"In any case," Mephisto's voice shook him from the mind-bending thoughts, "it took him nine years to get it right.

"Nine years?" Rin burst out, completely thrown as he tried to understand Satan possessing and repossessing the human in the tank. Tried to imagine nine years floating in that state.

"Let's hurry on," Mephisto said like the revelation meant nothing and was just another thing like the sky being blue or sukiyaki being amazing.

Another thought pressed at him, and Rin stopped Mephisto with a hand on his sleeve.

"Wait, what happened with Father Fujimoto and mom?" They'd left off on such crazy terms, he needed to know how things went in the nine years after. He didn't really want to see, still shying away from the past with a creeping sensation along his spine that Yukio should have been the one in his place. Rin knew he had to see it though, if only to assure himself that things were okay.

"You're worried about them?" Mephisto said, his smile wry as Rin hid the way his cheeks heated. The green of his eyes gleamed and his smile turned impish. "You're really into this."

Remembering the way Mephisto had shivered in excitement over the scene in the greenhouse, the way he'd said that he loved watching humans and the things they did, had Rin wondering if he was happy to see him showing interest in his "hobbies." The concept alone was enough to cheer Rin up and steel his nerves so he could take them back to Yuri and Shiro.

It was sweet, he decided, as he watched Shiro make his grumbling way up to Yuri and Rick in the halls of the Academy. A stilted apology came out, one filled with Shiro asking why Yuri was so obsessed with him and his mother not even denying it a little.

But, despite the truly awful way Shiro was with people, Rin's heart settled, sighing when Shiro turned his head and admitted, "We can be friends. It'd be beneficial to have lots of allies instead of being alone."

"I feel better," Rin said as they finished the scene. It was for a given definition of "better." His gaze trailed the way Shiro strode past his new friends, something lighter in his steps.

"Mm," Mephisto hummed against him, catching Rin's attention with the undercurrent he heard as a nose pressed to his hair. "Should you ever want to do this at a later point, I have a few scenes in mind I think we'll both enjoy viewing."

Was being a voyeur into the past considered a bonding activity? Rin couldn't help the thought, humor twitching at the corners of his mouth as he nodded. "Ok, it's a date."

Mephisto's quiet huff of laughter followed them into the next scene, humor tucked away in favor of the future, nine years later.

"To me, it felt like the duration of a sneeze." Rin couldn't see Mephisto's face as he said that, mind lingering on the short scenes of nine years of life played out for Yuri and Shiro. They'd grown, changed, matured, and, in Shiro's case, mellowed out a bit.

He had friends now, taught classes like Yukio did. He'd gone from the alienated, terrified kid into someone Rin recognized, even if he wasn't fully the man Shiro would become.

People drifted in and out of their lives. His mother's friend, Jenny, no longer joining them, replaced by a group in flux all adding bright spots of color amongst the day-to-day. Even with the horrors lurking beneath the Academy and the events on the horizon, Rin began to slip into something comfortable.

In his mind, Rin pictured what things might look like for himself nine years from his present. Would Yukio still teach? Would Shiemi run the shop for her mother like she'd said last? Would there even be an Academy to return to? And, his gaze flicked to Mephisto, what would he and Amaimon be doing? The loose threads of the future unspun from Rin's mind. He couldn't imagine it, didn't have it in him to think that far ahead.

There existed the here and now for Rin, but he thought, if things turned out something like what he saw developing for his mother and Shiro, then it wouldn't be all that bad.

At his side, Mephisto watched with the same ease he had in every other scene, nothing on his face giving away what he thought about it, what he gained from viewing humanity like he did.

Rin had compared Mephisto's life to a video game, but when Rin played games, he grew attached to the plot and the characters, and, even though sometimes he wanted to deny it, he knew Mephisto...didn't.

Even how Mephisto viewed him, Rin couldn't say, just pictured a memory of the rich red lights of the room during the festival and Mephisto holding the flower Rin had given him, saying he liked Rin.

He'd liked Shiro, too.

"When the subject's physical reinforcement was sufficient, Satan finally assumed a body," Mephisto said as they stared at the shattered glass tank that had housed what had been a human just moments before.

Now, gasping in a pool of liquid and blue flame spilling around the body, Satan had taken control.

Already, the Section Thirteen researchers gathered in a panic, shouting about an unknown demon having possessed one of the clones while Eminescue arrived on the scene to stare in rising awe.

"It isn't me?" Rin contained a flinch as he stared into the room where Lucifer watched the ceiling after sensing Satan's possession, his disbelief clear in the slivered pupils and face a mess of rotted patches as evidence the newest elixirs had begun failing him again. Danger had darkened his confusion, making Rin want to find the nearest hole to hide and get out of the direct line of fire as far as he could go.

Suddenly, Rin feared for Satan–a completely irrational fear that still made him tremble as he imagined that ire turned on the one who had managed to get a vessel before Lucifer. At Satan.

He didn't move, frozen by the paralysis that always accompanied the outbursts from Lucifer. Even if this particular scene had ended, moving was beyond Rin, had been the second the fury radiated from Lucifer in an overbearing aura.

His hands shook where he had them pressed to the floor Rin crouched on. He'd fallen at some point, knees weakened without his awareness.

The stare on Lucifer's face fell unseeing towards Rin and his heart skipped, fear following the sensation.

Could he sense him? Would he somehow look past the barrier protecting Rin and hear the racing pulse he couldn't slow? The door he peeked through was no real protection at all. Not when Lucifer teetered on the edge of a total meltdown the longer his suffering continued.

Claws gripped his neck and pulled Rin from the door. He gasped as he lost sight of Lucifer, breaths restarting and inhaling ozone as possessive arms locked around him and kept him caged.

"Really, Rin," Mephisto said. It sounded strange. "How will you face Satan in this state?"

Rin twisted in Mephisto's hold and froze. His knees weakened again.

A glow seared from Mephisto's eyes as a cold and endless void that leeched the warmth his body gave off before it reached Rin and left him chilled. The trembling being near one of Lucifer's fits caused returned.

But, it roused a piece of Rin that had been stifled by Lucifer and it bubbled up in his chest to burn the paralysis away. That part of him that said Mephisto wouldn't–couldn't–hurt him, not if he didn't want him to.

He glanced back and saw Lucifer, felt some of the fear press that part of him down again when the power of the oppressive, unmitigated aspect of light touched him, and fought another flutter of his heart unsuccessfully.

"Rin," Mephisto's call of his name came tight from his lips despite the smile they pulled in. A fang peeked from his lips, grown into a wedge instead of the usual polite length he kept them at. His hands twitched, fingers nearly bruising with their pressure and working to distract Rin.

"I'm-It's not," Rin sucked in a breath and jerked free to stand, anger in his scowl. Mephisto was right. He couldn't let Lucifer scare him, not to the point of being unable to move.

"I got it," he said with a self-directed growl.

Lucifer's insanity wouldn't ever not be terrifying to Rin. He didn't understand that mindframe and didn't want to. He didn't know why being around Lucifer now was having the effect on him that it was. Before, he'd tried to launch himself at Lucifer for taking Izumo–one of his, and no one touched what was his–from him and had only been stopped because he'd been held back.

The difference twisted into knots in his head until it lost itself in the vortex of Lucifer's madness and Rin gave up trying to understand it.

"I'm good," he reiterated, though the gaze Mephisto watched Rin with burned into him as he inhaled a long breath and forced himself from the room, hackles still raised by the memory of Lucifer's eyes and aspect. He would think about the strange tension in Mephisto later when he wasn't so on edge.

It followed Rin into the future.

The next scene was a board room that stung Rin's nose with the level of tension in the air. All except Mephisto, who sat at the head, smiling in a slight turn of his lips. Rin stood to the side, once again playing the silent bodyguard he wasn't sure why anyone thought Mephisto needed.

He kept his hands at his back in a lax hold for lack of anything better to do, torn between the way the room ripped itself apart over the strange demon, and Mephisto, who still somehow seemed to choreograph the whole thing without lifting a finger. Just a light nudge, a comment where it would have the most impact, and he could sit back and observe as much as Rin was.

"We're restraining him with wards."

Chatter spun out almost too fast for Rin to follow, a sensation building in his gut he registered as dread the longer it pressed there until he thought the atmosphere might suffocate him in the room. It felt like the beginning of the end, the calm before the storm already spinning into existence.

"But you're still not sure which demon it is?"

No one recognized the horns and tail, and Satan's current mental state meant he couldn't communicate who he was. Rin didn't think he even had a name yet. His tail curled tighter to his chest, Rin suddenly aware that he and Satan shared the same features, horns and tail included. It wasn't just the flames that marked him, and Rin wondered if that was the reason Mephisto wanted him well out of Lucifer's focus on the off chance he looked too closely.

How much would any interaction with something like Lucifer, like Amaimon, really confuse them, as Mephisto had warned? Would they remember him in his present? Not that Rin wanted to find out. A shiver went through his body entirely unrelated to the panicked room.

They'd begun trying to decide if they should remove Satan until Eminescu interjected with their facility's purpose of getting Lucifer a viable body, that they needed this newly possessed vessel to study.

The decision, in the end, came down to Mephisto.

"I propose a compromise," Mephisto broke in easily.

Shiro. They would bring in Shiro.

Foreboding replaced the shivers in Rin at hearing Mephisto's solution. Of course, Shiro would be involved, Rin knew there wasn't any reality in which he wasn't, but the easy way Mephisto suggested it knowing the path Shiro walked had Rin biting the insides of his cheek until he bled.

"Was this really the only way?" he murmured after Mephisto from his place at the door to the next scene, getting a stilling of the shoulders at his half rhetorical question.

He'd asked it before, at the clone lab where he'd watched Shiro stifle pained cries while getting cut open. That had been a general question about using the clones. This was about Shiro the individual, the one who called Mephisto friend.

It wouldn't change Mephisto's answer.

"There are many ways," he finally said, his gaze empty where he looked from the corner of his eyes. "This is the only one I'll accept."

What was acceptable to Mephisto? What outcome did he want? Neither were things Rin thought Mephisto would reveal, despite glimpsing the edges of it in his office.

Rin left, rubbing where his tail pressed to his chest, the phantom scent and feel of the tie he'd worn there like a pressure he couldn't erase with his touch. The pressure increased when he saw Shiro striding down the hall to where Satan was kept.

In his mind, he imagined stopping Shiro, turning him back, away from the fate he moved towards with the same surety as he had on every mission he'd gone to before. Rin imagined saving Shiro.

Reality replaced the fantasy playing out in Rin's head as Shiro strode past him and into the room. Mephisto hadn't come with, leaving Rin alone to wrestle with the two sides that knew nothing he could do would stop what was happening but wanted to so, so desperately it ached to his bones.

The doors closed behind them, sealing them in the room. Being in an enclosed space with Shiro and Satan sent Rin's hackles rising, a growl fighting to grow with the raised hairs, but holding himself back. He tracked the flickers of Satan's eyes.

"Goro?" Shiro's gasp alerted Rin just as Satan raised his eyes and the tension snapped, the sound a catalyst working to focus Satan's attention.

"Ah!" the wordless cry from Satan sent the exorcists in the room ducking as they shouted for sedatives.

They were too close. Satan flared up, the heat from his flames washing over Rin in a familiar caress almost like his own. If he wasn't looking, it would be like he'd been the one to set his flames on the three exorcists nearest Satan. It would have been him who burned them alive.

A detachment had grown in Rin along with the knot in his stomach that wouldn't ease.

"He's gonna bolt!"

"Don't worry, there's a transmitter in his neck."

"He's so powerful."

"What demon is that?"

He closed the door on the last of the panicked exorcists watching after where Satan had fled from, face empty of any expression that he could feel. Numbed legs took him through dark streets, though he didn't even really need to focus his footing, Satan's presence burning on his senses and heading towards something with unerring speed.

That something revealed itself with a now-familiar voice, one Rin dreaded hearing just then.

"Whew! I'm exhausted," Yuri said to Rick where they walked.

Easy smiles drew over their faces and they chatted about work, going out for drinks, Rick's wife and kid, how Jenny had changed and grown distant, things that Rin knew were about to be shattered apart by blue flame, Satan's approach like a ticking bomb whose countdown he could feel in every beat of his heart.

A heaviness accompanied his heartbeats and weighed like iron in sand to collect alongside the knot in his stomach.

Yuri split from Rick as he called for her to stop agreeing to help everyone all the time, to get home safe, while Rin trailed after Yuri on feet that dragged as much as his heart did.

At the bottom of a stairway, Yuri paused, alerted by a sound.

Through the dark, Rin saw perfectly, his eyes catching what Yuri couldn't with a human's sight.

"Who's there?"

Run. He wanted to whisper. His mouth moved without voicing anything.

Wil o' wisp blue flame appeared at the top of the stairs, Yuri staring up at it with widening eyes.

"Rin-" her voice cut out as Satan followed from the dark. His eyes burned alongside the flames of his horns and the ones flickering at the tip of his tail with every step closer to Yuri.

"Shi-ro?" she said, gasping as Satan began wordless cries and lurched towards her.

His movement startled her back, Yuri beginning to flee as Satan stumbled forward, lips trying to form something Rin couldn't make out between the cries until he managed to piece them together into the right shape.

"Yuri," Satan rasped from a throat unused to vocalizing, something harsh and guttural as if he would have been more at home uttering growls, snarling animalistically.

Rin's heart stopped as Yuri paused her attempts to escape and raised her hands to reach for Satan where he kneeled before her. She began saying the name she'd given the blue flame that had followed her all her life. It felt like she'd sealed her fate in those syllables, something written in stone.

Before Satan could respond, shots rang out and he fell, needles to what must have been tranquilizers protruding from his neck.

As a confused Yuri was led away by the members of Section Thirteen for questioning, Rin became aware of heat running down his knuckles where he'd clenched them, blood dripping to the ground long after they'd vanished from the area.

In the silence surrounding Rin, Mephisto's absence burned.

Emotions roiled in Rin's gut he couldn't calm, turbulent ever since he'd seen Amaimon and refusing to settle.

Was it the strained claim throwing him so off-kilter? The past he was viewing? Mephisto? Some chimera of all of them and the continued worries about Yukio?

"What's inside him? And why did he go to that girl?" The questions from the exorcists of Section Thirteen shook Rin from his thoughts.

He peered into the observation room where Yuri was being politely interrogated to find any connection that might have brought the unknown demon to her. From what Rin could hear, she hadn't revealed her history with the blue flames. Protecting Satan. Rin grimaced.

"There's nothing unusual about her. She teaches cram school students and tamers. She's written several textbooks. She's well known amongst the tamers."

All this information ran through Rin's head, but he wasn't any good at using it. Not like Yukio. Yukio would have started wondering about her students, the books she'd written, if anything of hers still survived, students, tamers, or textbooks.

Maybe, the musing drifted across Rin's mind, Mephisto had copies of her work. If he said something, Mephisto might even lend him them, just like Yukio had asked Rin to do the night of the party. Yukio had always loved books, where words just swam in Rin's head and made all but simple manga panels a nightmare to get through no matter his interest in the subject.

Yukio would like them, Rin knew, and maybe it would bridge some of the gaps between them if he brought that piece of the past with him, or even brought Yukio back to see it.

He just had to make it back to Yukio.

Thundering, heavy sounds and a burning presence rapidly approaching sent Rin freezing in place, body taut and held between fight and flight as he searched the far wall through the observation room. Satan neared again. The anesthesia they had him under must have failed already.

Just as Satan approached the last barrier, the humans in the room jerked around, ears finally picking up what Rin had been listening for.

"No! Not again!"

The wall to the interrogation room blew inwards, flame following as Satan screamed for Yuri. Bullets from the exorcists who'd chased him from his cell shot at his back, prompting a vicious snarl and Satan igniting them until they'd become molten lead on the floor. Their attack set Satan reacting and he turned from Yuri with his eyes blue flares in his skull with more flickering to life in his palm he raised.

Flames ate the weapons into the same liquid metal he'd turned the bullets into before Satan bared his fangs at the now fleeing exorcists.

"Stop it!" Arms wound to Satan's, Yuri faced him with the same firm stare she'd stood the storming golem down with.

"Ah, Yuri," Satan said in a wavering vocalization, his ire distracted by Yuri in an instant.

At her steadiness, the flames on Satan's palm dissipated and Yuri smiled in clear relief as she stepped back, holding his hand. "Good, boy."

It was so simple, but Rin could see Yuri knew the control could snap at any moment, a sheen of sweat on her skin as the others in the room murmured about her ability to control the unknown demon.

Sweat prickled at Rin's skin as another flicker of energy ran along his nerves and his attention already moved to the entrance to the observation room as the door opened.

Mephisto met his gaze, the only one in the room able to sense Rin while his uniform's hood was up, before sliding to the mirror they watched Satan and Yuri in with his usual light smile on his face. "He seems to like her."

He did, attentive eyes and focus completely on Yuri as if no one else existed in the room. Animalistic. Rin didn't think he was processing anything beyond what was a threat and what was Yuri.

"After all," Mephisto's voice brought Rin from Satan, seeing him watching Yuri unerringly, "I hear she's quite the tamer."

"Shall we enlist her aid?" As Mephisto said that, Shiro turned wide eyes to him, fear entering them, and Rin thought it might feel something like what filled his stomach the longer Satan's gaze didn't leave Yuri.

"Until we tame that thing, our hands are tied."

The scene closed on that statement, but something kept Rin lingering once everyone had left. His feet wouldn't take him to the door, and he couldn't seem to look from where Satan had stood.

Just the wall that would have to be repaired to the interrogation room and the faint scents of the occupants stayed like they were frozen in time, though Rin didn't register them, waiting.

A shadow along his spine sent him shivering as he leaned back into Mephisto when he came.

"This scene is long over, is something keeping you, Rin?"

Claws drew the hood from his head, settling at his shoulders while Rin licked at his lips, trying to put into words what anchored him to his spot.

"He's just," he began, "he's like an animal. He won't stop staring at her, but it's like there's nothing else there. Like-"

Like an automaton, a doll.

His lips twisted, Rin unable to find a way to describe why seeing Satan like he was made him repel from the sight- "Like he's empty, and she could just say anything and he'll listen."

That wasn't right though. Satan wasn't empty, he brimmed with a danger that sent Rin's hairs rising and it wasn't even set on him. Not like Yuri. He wasn't empty, he was observant, listening to Yuri like she was the only one in the room with him and he wanted to pick her apart to figure out what she was–everyone else were just obstacles in the way.

Sometimes Amaimon looked at Rin that way–and Mephisto, when he thought Rin wasn't paying attention. But Rin always paid attention to them, now. They looked at him like he was the only thing that existed beside themselves. It was ok for him, though, because he could handle himself, and they were his.

Yuri couldn't possibly know who and what Satan was.

"And," he finally looked up at Mephisto, his frustration at himself meeting the raised brow as Mephisto let him continue, "she's supposed to tame him."

Tame something incomprehensible to Rin, except in the part of himself that recognized the actions. All Rin could see was the creature Satan had become, the cackling, childish, mocking demon–and dangerous, so, so dangerous–and try to imagine how he came to be that way. He knew it was impossible. Mephisto knew it was impossible. Section Thirteen, Shiro. Even Yuri knew the being she handled was beyond the scope of anything she'd ever worked with before.

"There's nothing more for you here, lingering won't give you your answers, Rin." He blinked, once again torn from his thoughts as Mephisto appraised him without giving anything away.

'You can't prolong the inevitable.' Rin could hear the rest of the unsaid sentence and hunched his shoulders, nodding in a sharp motion before taking the key out to leave.

Yuri would start working at Section Thirteen.

The dread filling Rin was echoed in the long groan from Shiro as she delivered the news with a smile that said she knew it would get that reaction. She was right, though, their hands were tied.

Their conversation brimmed with inevitability. Yuri admitted she couldn't escape Section Thirteen any more than Shiro, and that she especially couldn't escape Rinka, the name for the wil o' wisp that had trailed her from childhood to now.

"Getting involved with demons only spells trouble," Shiro spat to Yuri's slight smile. "You could die!"

A phone ringing stopped anything Yuri might have said. She waved, saying she was being called away, heading out the door and leaving Shiro to eat his meal at the bar he'd chosen for the night. Rin wanted to sit next to him and maybe take the drink he'd ignored in favor of Yuri. He flinched at the thought.

Suddenly, sitting and sharing a drink and a meal with Shiro sounded like the only thing Rin needed then. His chest ached, squeezing in a tight throb as he ducked his head further beneath the hood.

He wanted to talk to Shiro. He wanted the advice he'd never taken as a kid. He wanted his dad.

His fangs grit and a prickling started in his eyes, blurring the sight of Shiro alone in his seat.

This Shiro wasn't the one he could talk with, though. He was more lost than Rin.

The door had closed behind Yuri and it took a moment for Rin to realize Rick had come in after her, a light flush on his face that said he'd been drinking as he ambled to Shiro and slapped his back.

Rin closed his eyes, listening to Rick drunkenly stumble through pestering Shiro about Yuri.

"You like her, right?" Rick slurred. "Yuri's actually really popular, so don't come crying to me when someone else snatches her up."

He was right, but like Rin had been, Shiro wasn't ready for advice.

Rin watched as Yuri soothed another of Satan's outbursts. The next scene had begun with her struggles to keep Satan calm, only content when she was around. It wasn't a new scenario, almost repetitious, after he'd observed enough of them.

He went on, half expecting another scene of Satan throwing a tantrum, but stiffened as he found himself back in Lucifer's chamber listening to the way Mephisto asked Lucifer about what he thought the "new arrival was" and tried to make himself focus on the conversation.

A faint hum of wires and the beep of a heart monitor chilled Rin. He couldn't feel the air conditioning he knew must have made the bowels of Section Thirteen achingly cold without anything but metal to insulate things, but was frozen nonetheless.

Lucifer lay in the center, once again beginning to rot around the elixir filling his vessel. The sight repelled Rin with the sheer sense of wrongness. It pervaded the body Lucifer wore, ill-fitting and making Rin realize just how used to seeing Amaimon settle into his like the second skin it was.

His heart gave the barest twinge at thinking about Amaimon. It had stopped hurting a few scenes ago like it had with Mephisto when he'd stopped being able to smell him on his tie. The sensation now came from the length of time and the human part of Rin reacting to everything he'd seen up until that point, knowing he still had so far to go.

Nothing showed on Mephisto's face as he asked Lucifer if he knew what demon had inhabited the body of the clone. Rin didn't know how to understand what he saw. A shiver went through him he fought through while the source of it lay in the bed without any awareness that just his presence caused the reaction in Rin.

"It is connected to every phenomenon in existence," Lucifer said, refusing to look at Mephisto, or not having the energy or care to. "I'm sure you can sense that."

Surely Lucifer knew Mephisto–of any being–understood how Satan functioned and what he could do.

When Mephisto pretended he didn't know what Satan was, how did a being like Lucifer trust that he told the truth?

"It is that which gave birth to us all. It is all of creation."

Rin was simple. Whatever Mephisto did, he would take it at face-value and act like he told the truth. If what he did crossed a line, Rin would say so. To begin doubting would only confuse him because he wasn't a smart guy like Yukio.

But was it the same for Lucifer?

He winced and left the scene.

The irises of Satan's eyes glowed and swirled with the endless pools of his flames.

Overhead where he lay in her lap, Yuri smiled and read a book to him, unaware that he was miles away.

Rin could see the way Satan's core flexed around him, active where he was motionless. He wondered what he looked at and couldn't imagine it. His mind's eye tracked the eddies and whorls the energy made. Was this what his own core looked like? When Mephisto and Amaimon looked at him, did they see him or Satan?

Irrationally, he wanted to ask Mephisto, but the question barely made sense to Rin, let alone if he tried to explain how looking at Satan lost in his own thoughts made him feel.

It dragged on, one scene to the next. Rin faced each of them with growing exhaustion. He didn't see Amaimon again.

Slowly, he watched Satan absorb everything Yuri taught him, different foods, math, books.

Like a child, one that could pick a concept up the first time but with a child's patience, bored the moment the lesson was understood.

Even Rin could see the danger.

"Ah!" Yuri gasped, looking down at the cage where a few hamsters lay dead inside. Rin had watched Satan pick the organs from their bodies with vague fascination and tried not to think about Amaimon. "Why did you kill them?"

And Satan. "I was just making holes."

Satan didn't understand.

His emotions lagged behind the knowledge he picked up like a sponge. For a being comprising all of creation, Satan acted childish, Rin wincing as he watched him have another meltdown over Yuri's absence until she could be called back.

The outbursts were common, each, Rin saw Yuri handle as best she could, calming Satan as he cried and demanded her undivided attention so that she could entertain him in his boredom.

"How long can she keep this up?" he'd asked Mephisto during one of the moments in between when he couldn't stay away anymore. Not that Mephisto had let it get to that point again, drifting to Rin's side to brush against him when no one would notice, always with a sly smile or observing Rin with an unreadable gaze.

Like the one he wore at Rin's question.

"What do you think will happen when she can't, anymore?" His response wasn't any more helpful. Rin huffed and rolled his eyes, accepting the energy that swirled along his, asking for permission with a playfulness at odds with the topic of conversation.

It continued for a year and some months along the past, Rin standing in the observation room of the latest scene while researchers discussed Satan's progress.

They wanted to increase the level of material Yuri went over with him, saying he needed something more advanced.

Yuri said it was too soon, he needed more experience before advancing.

A compromise was reached. Volunteers would join her so that she could slowly introduce Satan to others besides her.

The only volunteer was Shiro. The others were too scared after so many had been killed by Satan's fits. Reasonably, too. Anyone should be terrified.

Even Rin could see how it would go, though the part of him that hoped Shiro had come far enough along that he wouldn't react like–like a brat still tried to rise up.

He shouldn't have bothered.

A long sigh exhaled through his teeth.

What followed was the most childish interaction Rin had witnessed since he'd begun watching the events of the past. And he'd witnessed a lot in the last who knew how long he'd been gone for.

"He's worse than I was," Rin grumbled as Shiro goaded Satan by touching all his things, ignoring the hissing and rampant jealousy just being around Yuri inspired. In both of them.

"I recall differently," Mephisto said from his shoulder where he'd become a small insect hidden by the hood of his cloak. "We can always take a detour to see your childhood too, if you'd like to prove it."

"I'm not taking that bet," Rin muttered back, rolling his eyes. His lips twitched in wry amusement as he tried to imagine how viewing his own past would be like. The violent outbursts and fighting would probably be funnier in hindsight.

Skittering legs tickled at his skin where Mephisto shifted and Rin resisted the urge to brush his cheek to his shoulder. He probably wouldn't squash Mephisto like the bug he currently was, but he didn't want to knock him off or something.

The small form nestled further into the folds of his uniform as Yuri called for a halt for the day and Shiro left with a grudging reply that he'd come back to keep helping.

His gaze drifted to catch on Satan and Rin froze as he realized something was wrong.

Muttering reached Rin from where he stood, though it didn't alert Yuri as she began to clean up. Satan stared after Shiro, lost in a stream of "Beat him, beat him, beat him."

It wasn't something that sounded to Rin like a successful play date.

"This isn't good," he mumbled half to himself, and half to Mephisto. But what could he do? And what could Yuri do?

Every move forward increased the pressure in the air until Rin suffocated from it. All the exits closed off one by one and Yuri was trapped in the cage with the inhuman creature she'd been attached to all her life.

She left with a wave to the guards by the doors. Rin barely heard them wondering if she had a boyfriend. If she and Shiro were a "thing."

Rin didn't breathe. The tension built to a single, high pitched tone in his ears, ringing while his vision tunneled on the door.

Fire spun in an inferno that the humans guarding the door couldn't sense, noticing too late when the blue flames spilled into the hall from the now opened door where Satan pushed.

"Emergency! Subject 005 has broken out!"

His eyes closed as Rin left the scene with another long exhale, wishing it helped relieve the tension.

The beginning of the end had come. And Yuri had been right from the start, there wasn't a way to safely handle something like Satan. She'd seen the precarious control she'd had on Satan and the wire she walked between his rapid absorption of knowledge along with his lack of empathy.

Rin didn't know how Shiro had raised him, even sealed as he was. If he went back in time and viewed his own past, would it look like Satan's? Maybe not to the extent, but the pit forming in his gut said he had more in common with Satan than he'd ever wanted to face.

An ache tightened his chest as he saw Yuri's last night of peace juxtaposed with an eerily still Satan tearing through books faster than humanly possible, more piling in from the members of Section Thirteen on Eminescue's orders.

Crackling flames were the only sounds besides the flipping pages until Rin couldn't take it anymore and jumped forward to when Yuri returned the next morning.

"What happened?" she exclaimed when she saw the blocked off hallway and numerous guards at the entrance to Satan's cell.

Eminescue came over. "I'm sorry, but I authorized it."

"He broke containment and demanded books." Yuri's eyes widened in dawning understanding. "He wanted as much information as possible before you reported for duty."

Why hadn't they called Yuri back the minute Satan broke out? A small part of Rin wondered if it would have meant anything if Yuri had been there to guide Satan through the books he read.

The straight-backed, cocky position Satan sat in on a chair resting on a towering stack of books made Rin think it wouldn't have made much of a difference at all.

Mephisto was absent from the area, too. Not even bothering to hide in Rin's uniform hood like he had before. Had he been hiding from sight from Satan? Or did he just not care about the current progression of events.

"Rinka," Yuri spoke calmly, the way she always did, even when Rin could sense the fear from her. He knew that if he could sense it, then Satan could too. It wasn't something Rin could explain to his friends, but even though Yuri outwardly showed no signs of it, Rin knew it clung to her.

Maybe the fear scent from the man Satan held hostage in a circle of his flames covered Yuri's. Or Maybe Satan enjoyed it.

It was something demons were supposed to like–to feed on–Rin knew, rubbing a hand to his chest and wincing at the hum from Satan as he acknowledged Yuri's presence.

"That old name?" Rin's stomach dropped.

"Let this man go," Yuri said carefully.

A shrug, Satan unconcerned as he agreed.

"Good, now then–"

Fire flared around the body and Rin hissed as the man vanished into ashes, Yuri's gasp swept up in the echoes of a scream.

Laughter burst from Satan, childlike, almost. Like a kid who had played a prank on their parent and didn't realize the damage they'd caused.

"Are you surprised, Yuri?" Satan turned around and grinned in a baring of fangs. "I'm different from yesterday."

He was. Rin had sensed it the second he'd seen him on his throne of books.

"I've obtained all this knowledge and I realized something!" Old memories churned in Rin's head of sermons of Shiro's he'd partially slept through. The ones about a garden and a fruit of knowledge and the way things were irrevocably changed upon its consumption.

In Satan's eyes, blue flared, hands raised in a broad sweep and every picture a careless deity.

"I am a god."

His smile turned into a smirk as he propped his cheek to his fist. "A demon god. So you can call me Satan."

It was all so…Rin scowled, fingers flexing at his sides. Then turned to the presence at his spine that had finally shown itself.

"Oh good," Mephisto said around a mouthful of chips, "I didn't miss the big action."

On the one hand, this wasn't just some scene in a book, though for Mephisto Rin knew it might as well have been. But on the other hand, the part of Rin who had watched Satan cry when Yuri left his sight for five minutes reared up again.

"He's talking like the villains in my manga," Rin said after Mephisto beamed at him, waiting for a response.

"He does make a good villain of these tragic events," Mephisto nodded along.

Rin stole a handful of chips from him and glared. "No, not really. He's–"

–Sad, childlike, and still waiting for Yuri's approval and attention.

"A brat."

"Well," Mephisto shrugged and licked some of the chip crumbs off his lips, "he's grandiose enough for the stage."

"I'm stronger than anyone!" Satan's pronouncement sent Rin cringing.

"I could crush that jerk Shiro in an instant–just like I did that scum earlier."

Was having a rivalry with a human really something to brag about?

"I'm omnipotent and omnipresent," Satan crowed as he stood from his chair. "All shall obey my will. Does that make you happy, Yuri?"

"Did he get that from the books, too?" Rin grumbled. Because he was pretty sure even if Satan was all that, Rin definitely wouldn't be obeying his will.

"Ah, impressionable youth," Mephisto sighed.

But, before Rin could respond, Yuri's welling tears sobered him and brought him back to the scene.

"Killing is wrong," Yuri said, her tears falling. "I should have taught you better–after the hamsters–"

Satan just shook his head and began to scowl. "Don't be ridiculous. Why should I care about human morality? And why shouldn't I kill? Humans do it all the time. You even eat what you kill!"

He was right, but in the way a child was right, not understanding, not really. It was simplistic.

Everything broke down after that. Yuri couldn't get Satan to empathize with humans, Satan threw a fit and sent her flying backwards to be caught by Shiro, who'd arrived on the scene. His uniform protected them from the brunt of the flames, and Satan left in a burst of fire into the ceiling he flung himself up through.

"I am a being who has overcome life and death." Satan roared in the air he floated through above the city. "I am a god!"

Rin sighed, watching the demons swarm to Satan, who decided to take them under his wing. He wondered which of the books he'd read that had influenced him making the decision.

"Someone should have given him different books," Rin said where he sat on the chaise lounge with Mephisto.

"Don't you have a ton?" Although, what books Mephisto had in his library might not be the best learning material for a new god either. But it had to be better than whatever had inspired Satan to take on the villainous overlord role. He needed to read more shoujo manga.

An appalled gasp came from Mephisto. "And risk my collection in his grubby paws? He'd have bent the pages!"

"Not even for world peace, huh?" Rin said dryly.

"They're limited editions!" Mephisto exclaimed. "Signed by the authors!"

Flashbacks to Yukio complaining about Rin crying over his own manga came back to Rin and his lips twitched in a smile. It faded as he remembered where Yukio was in the present. Who he was with.

Satan disappeared and Rin tucked the worries for Yukio away again, knowing it wouldn't be long before they reemerged.

"He said he was a god," Yuri whispered later to Eminescue as she debriefed him from the medical bay in Section Thirteen where she and Shiro had been taken. "He said he was Satan."

"I don't really get it," Rin said later to Mephisto as they moved to Lucifer's lab. "He just chose that name. Why's it a big deal?"

It was too complicated for Rin to put into words. But Satan could have picked any name and he would still be as powerful, would still be a being representing Gehenna.

A chuckle escaped Mephisto and Rin pouted at him, hackles soothed by his wry smile.

"A good question, Rin," he said, apparently happy to play teacher. "Did you think my names were inherent to me? Or that they are anything more than skins I wear?"

Er, that was a way to put it. "Both, kind of?" Rin tried, scratching at his hair and wondering if it was something he was supposed to have learned in classes.

"Correct!" Mephisto beamed at him, making Rin blink in surprise. "Humans either begin calling us by a name they feel represents us, or we choose a name that we feel suits us, like our vessels, as Satan did."

"But," a clawed finger raised, Rin going cross eyed as he stared at it, "the names are things that the humans equivocate with beings of our nature and status, something they try to define us by, even though they can never hope to fully define us."

A shrug, "Really, if I'm going by any name, calling myself the king of time and space is most accurate."

"Oh," Rin frowned, "I guess that makes sense."

Though, he had a feeling Mephisto enjoyed when humans picked a name for him, like it was a funny game to see what they came up with.

"You're you," Rin said as he finally determined what he thought about it all. Whatever name Mephisto chose, he would always be who he was.

Quiet laughter came again before they had to stifle it, arriving at the door to Lucifer's. Rin didn't know why anyone thought Mephisto needed a bodyguard but he wouldn't question it if they didn't.

Anything not to catch Lucifer's attention.

"Satan?" The voices of the Grigori members erupted through the video screens where they pointed towards Lucifer in his bed.

Mephisto stood next to him, a frown on his face as if he were just as concerned as everyone else in the room. Given Rin had just seen him laughing out in the hallway, he would hazard it wasn't anything more than a facade.

"It makes perfect sense," Lucifer rasped from his bed. The rot crept up his cheeks, and his throat had been wrapped, hinting at more beneath the layers. Rin still had to bite down on his cheeks to keep the tension from filling his body. He didn't know why just the sight of Lucifer made some animal hindbrain kick into life in him, just that it did. Satan didn't cause the reaction, even at his worst, and Rin didn't know what to feel about it.

"The new arrival can connect to nearly all us demons, such a being is worthy of the name Satan."

"But if it is Satan, the body he's possessing will fail soon," Eminescue added while the Grigori members wondered if it had failed already. Rin didn't think they'd be that lucky.

"I doubt that," Lucifer said, gaze going inward. "I cannot locate him, but we can sense him."

Rin also doubted that. He looked to Mephisto and once again wondered how anyone but especially Lucifer could trust that he told the truth. Or maybe, Lucifer just didn't care what Mephisto's plans were or what he said.

"He's still immature, but he's growing."

The words echoed in Rin's head as he went to the next scene and wound up in a sewer, the scents making him wrinkle his nose where he stood next to Mephisto, who apparently knew exactly where Satan hid.

Seeing the laughing being in the clothes he'd worn in the lab and surrounded by demons, Rin heaved a sigh and crouched down. He hadn't ever had a headache in his life, but he rubbed at his forehead and thought he might be getting one. Emotion warred behind his eyes, the scenes he'd watched up until that point flickering like a bad movie through his mind.

In his memories, the night he'd woken as a demon and lost Shiro juxtaposed with seeing Satan crying for Yuri's attention like a spoiled kid while Shiro laughed and acted like a brat.

"So," Mephisto began, "That is your father. What do you think? Is he like you imagined?"

He thought a lot of things. Things he wasn't smart enough to put into words. But, "No, not at all."

Rin really didn't know what to think. Not when he'd never wanted to know about the past and the messiness he knew existed there. It was too late for regrets though, and he couldn't go back even if he'd wanted to.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Mephisto's eyes gleamed when Rin glanced up at him between his fingers. He was probably fascinated by the things happening. And Rin's life was his current favorite series he was binging.

He rose and shook his head, unable to stop from looking at Satan again. "And you can't let the Order know he's down here, huh?"

The expected response came from Mephisto in a blithe wave of his hand. "Afraid not. That would end up with a massive manhunt and the collapse of the foundations of this city."

It sounded exactly like something that could happen if the Order was let on about Satan's location. Though Rin's head hurt trying to think of all the scenarios Mephisto must have been through to get to the one they were at now.

His tail twitched against his waist, and suddenly Rin hated the feeling of it constricted there when it wanted to lash at his feet. It sent him a few steps forward in jerky motions before he forced himself still.

He'd probably get called an exhibitionist again if he ripped off his uniform just to pace naked. So, with a shuddering sigh, he leaned against the wall by Mephisto in a slump.

"Onwards, then?" Mephisto asked, arms folded as he smiled down at Rin.

"Or did you want to stay in these sewers with your father?"

A snort left Rin, blowing his bangs up in a puff of air. "No thanks."

The sooner he left the sooner he could get the smell out of his nose.

"I'm going to waste all your hot water and fancy soaps when I get back to your place," Rin determined, ignoring the sound of complaint from Mephisto and moving to the next scene.

Life drifted scene to scene afterwards. Despite everything, with Satan gone to ground, Yuri and Shiro's lives fell back into a semblance of routine.

Though, even Shiro noticed that Yuri still couldn't let it go completely.

"Don't tell me you're still moping?" Shiro said after he'd tracked Yuri down to ask her to help him with a lesson plan. "It's been six months."

Somehow, six months felt like the blink of an eye to Rin, using the keys or not. It felt something like how Mephisto had described it, that sensation of being an observer to events and not a participant. Not that Mephisto didn't participate plenty.

One mission to Aomori to take out a Baba Yaga later, and Shiro sputtered down at Mephisto where he stood across his office desk newly tasked with caring for Shura.

He'd just rescued her and brought her back with him for lack of anywhere else to leave her.

"Why don't you be a foster parent to this poor girl, Father Fujimoto," Mephisto said with a wide smile. The tips of his fangs peeked out, cheeked leaned into his palm while Shiro blanched at the suggestion in horror.

"Gimme a break!" Shiro shrieked. "You always give me the worst assignments!"

"That's why you have so many medals!"

Rin smiled while Mephisto teased Shiro, seeing the urge to strangle him for his meddling was a universal experience. Was this the point Shiro began to see Mephisto as a friend?

Had enough time passed that Shiro could somehow overlook the things that had been done to him in the name of keeping Assiah safe from Lucifer's insanity to call Mephisto friend? Had he just decided that it wasn't worth it to hate Mephisto? Or did he still wait for the moment he would be able to rip his throat out with his teeth like he'd promised all those years ago.

At some point in Shiro's life, he had crossed a line. Maybe it was when he somehow came to be in charge of Rin and Yukio, but Rin couldn't say.

In the end, Shiro took Shura. It was either that or Mephisto had offered Asylum, and Shiro would never leave her there.

That didn't stop him from trying to pawn her off on Yuri, though. As if because she was the only woman he was actually friends with, he could just leave Shura there. Even Rin knew it wouldn't work, but he guessed Shiro was desperate. Given how barely capable of feeding himself he was, Rin could understand why.

"Then you should take her," Yuri said when her suggestion of letting Asylum have Shura was soundly rejected by Shiro.

"I can't babysit some brat!" Shiro yelped, probably trying to picture how he would bring his flings home with him, though Rin hadn't noticed many of those encounters, or at least they hadn't been relevant and Mephisto wasn't trying to tease Rin with them anymore.

Something softened in Yuri's eyes. "Well, Oku did say she couldn't have raised me alone."

She was talking about the old exorcist who had died in the fire. "She had help from Hiko, who was good at cooking. And Obaba, who knew all sorts of stuff!"

"You'll have to rely on someone, too, Shiro."

But who?

In the end, Yuri would keep Shura for a night while Shiro found help.

Her hand gripped the entry to the apartment as she bit her lips, calling out before Shiro left. "I'm waiting."

Wide eyes met her from Shiro.

"For Rinka."

Anger swept through Shiro as he growled, "That punk? He's dead. There's no way he's still hiding!"

A part of Rin didn't think even Shiro believed that.

"When his body starts to decompose," Yuri said, gaze dropping, "he'll be sure to return to Section Thirteen."

When she raised her eyes again, determination had filled them, stopping Shiro's words and Rin's heart.

"And when he does, I'm going to save him. And I don't want to involve Shura."

"Sorry," Yuri finished.

His heart started again, but only to sink in dread. It hardened in his stomach as Rin left the scene.

It was to see Shiro commanding a group of confused exorcists who watched Shura hang off him like a limpet. They were going to be his "apprentices." Rin snorted wryly. His babysitters, more like, though they clearly didn't realize it yet.

The change in mood helped Rin shake off some of the last scene, focusing instead on the poor Shiro trying to keep some of his tough guy image while a toddler proclaimed she would marry him and grow big "tits" to the bafflement of the surrounding exorcists.

Overlooking the whole scene were Yuri and Rick in one of the upper level walkways above the courtyard.

Rick's question about what exactly Yuri saw in Shiro had Rin listening closer, because he understood his own attachment to the person Shiro had become, the one who'd raised him, but what kept Yuri coming back to someone as prickly as Shiro was at this stage?

She stuttered. "Well, he's white like snow, and tall–and his eyes!"

That was it? Rin frowned, and Rick was just as lost.

"He's also scary and violent and perfectly incorrigible," Yuri said with a smile, leaning on the balcony to stare down at Shiro. "But there's a spot of warmth in him. It's frustrating, so I can't leave him alone."

"I've always reached out to him, hoping to touch that warm spot."

Rin stopped at that. His hand came to his chest, rubbing there like he could feel where Mephisto's tie had been.

His heart fluttered.

Oh.

He darted from the scene and ignored that his ears burned beneath his hood.

Rin stood next to Mephisto back in the lab where the sounds of Lucifer gagging around a failed, rotting vessel filled his ears and made him want to flee to the previous scene.

A cold sweat had begun on his skin under the layers of his uniform and Rin shivered.

"Why only me?" Lucifer screamed where he thrashed on the blood and rot stained cot.

The wretched cry sent Rin stiffening, mind flashing back to the insanity of Lucifer's green eyes boring into him all over again.

His movement made Mephisto pause and glance back, something in his gaze taking Rin's attention for a moment before it left again and he could breathe.

"It has been two years since the subject disappeared," Eminescue said, "and all derivative elixirs are decreasing in effectiveness because Lucifer has developed resistance to them."

"My brother's life is in danger, hm?" Mephisto said without any of the care Rin would have if it had been Yukio in Lucifer's place.

They were going to strengthen the barrier around Lucifer's treatment room, though Rin wasn't exactly sure what that would do. Maybe he wasn't as strong as Satan, but when just his fits cracked the metal panels and floors around him, a seal wasn't going to do much besides slap a bandaid on things.

Though, looking at Mephisto, Rin was pretty sure he knew that added barriers didn't mean much. Maybe it was to make the researchers feel better? Rin glanced at them and didn't think Mephisto cared much about their comfort or what it took to be around Lucifer all day.

So why?

Rin sucked in a sharp breath when he moved to the next scene and saw why.

A younger Todo and his family–all of them with the same freckles and distinct white streak of hair from their foreheads–moved through Section Thirteen, called in to update the seals.

He barely heard as they mocked Todo for asking questions about the assignment, though a part of Rin that would always exist bristled at the bullying, even for someone like Todo.

But he definitely noticed as Todo began working on the section just down the hall from the door to Lucifer's, pausing and staring as if transfixed. It looked like Mephisto had known even then that Todo would be drawn to Lucifer's light. Rin shuddered and moved on.

Neuhaus and…his wife? Rin watched as they sealed their fates, moving into Section Thirteen where they'd be living while Neuhaus worked as one of the researchers. His wife was pregnant. Would he think of his future kid when he saw the clones? Did his wife even know they were experimenting on kids like hers?

Even Rin could feel all the pieces moving into place, though he wouldn't ever be able to guess at the larger picture of what Mephisto was conducting.

It had to come to a head, though.

"This is a living hell," Shemihaza said as she stood over Lucifer.

Rin agreed. Anyone would, seeing what had happened to Lucifer in the two years since Satan had vanished. Where before features had existed on his face, skin not completely rotted away, now…

A corpse would have looked more alive than the thing Lucifer had become.

Bone and tendon showed through the places where his skin had melted off in patches, entire sections gone. Rin thought that if he wanted to, he could peek between his ribs and see his heart where it beat. He wasn't sure how it still did.

"Coming," Lucifer rasped from a throat eaten through.

The scene had ended, but Rin couldn't look away.

His gaze narrowed on the embers of Lucifer's eyes, the green coming from a place that wasn't related to any organs, but a demonic light that wouldn't dim until Lucifer left his vessel behind.

Why hadn't he left it behind?

"Rin." The sound of his name and a grip like iron on his arm jerked Rin from his stupor. He winced, seeing an expression he couldn't place on Mephisto as he pulled him aside so he couldn't see Lucifer anymore.

Mephisto's pupils had slivered in his eyes and his lips shivered for a minute. Rin thought he could see extended fangs.

"Sorry," he said, shaking his head and turning to leave, "I–sorry."

He pulled free and left before he could try to understand why he'd seen what he would swear was possessiveness curling Mephisto's lips over his fangs.

Light split the sky in the next scene as exorcists shouted in alarm below.

Rin didn't breathe as Satan stormed past with a slew of demons, most of which were kinds he'd never even seen before.

Around them, exorcists tried to run.

"You filth," Satan wheezed, "do something about my body!"

It was falling apart. His hair had grown long–he'd even gotten a beard–but blood seeped from his eyes from broken veins and Rin could smell the rot clinging to him beneath the torn black cloak he'd covered his naked body with.

The demons mowed down the fleeing exorcists, Satan telling them not to pay them any mind as Rin followed them to their destination. Screams trailed them, silenced in the wave while their echoes rang in Rin's ears.

A hobgoblin tore down a girl who barely reached Rin's hips and he stretched out to grab her from the jaws only to wince and pull back.

He could flare up in a billow of flames and kill every one of the attacking demons in the vicinity, but it wouldn't do anything because these people had already died years ago. Not unless he somehow learned how to interact in the time stream like Mephisto, and Rin didn't trust himself not to mess it up if he did.

Wheezing breaths sounded loud over the cries of the humans and demons. They came from Satan as he made his way to the labs.

Rin slipped out a side door, leaving Satan to his stumbling path.

In Lucifer's room, the sounds of the rampage vibrated through the walls, but Lucifer knew the source. His voice cut through Rin's ears, sending them pinning back.

"It's Satan," Lucifer began. He spoke to himself, eyes a steady glow on the doors to the lab where Rin stood and fought not to tremble beneath his hood.

Chaos erupted at his words. Shemihaza and her weird entourage panicking.

Their panic barely made it to him as they rushed to take Shemihaza from the room despite her protests that she needed to stay by Lucifer's side. Only Jeremiah remained, apparently happy to give up his life for Lucifer and that same empty smile on his face as he was left alone amongst demons.

"Indeed, you have returned," Lucifer said with a rasping voice that pulled Rin in. He hadn't blinked, lost in the glowing gaze.

It flickered and Rin snapped from his paralysis, leaving the room back to where Satan cornered a nervous Eminescu. His hand had trembled on the key in his hand and, when Rin glanced up, he could see the way Mephisto watched the tremors before he could get them under control.

He'd been silent, standing at Rin's back until just then, but now that he'd captured Rin's attention, he seemed to loom, a shadow like the one he'd defended Rin against Lucifer with when he'd first appeared to declare war. Unlike then, Mephisto's shadow enveloped Rin like a shroud that wanted to smother him in the dark.

It wasn't the Mephisto who laughed and poked at Rin, teasing him with a playfulness that made him seem almost harmless, despite the claws and fangs that could cut just as easily as his words. It also wasn't the Mephisto who played the detached observer to Rin's life, the director who viewed Rin as a duty and a piece on the board.

The Mephisto looking at Rin now–drowning out the scene entirely–was closer to Samael.

"I demand a new body immediately!"

Satan's snarl shattered the stare-down Rin had unknowingly entered with Mephisto and he sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, tasting ozone on his tongue.

What was that?

Eminescue stuttered something about the body and Satan having acclimated to each other, that there wasn't another like it. When it made Satan lurch closer dangerously, he mentioned the elixir.

"Then do it! Prepare the elixir!"

More gagging coughs ravaged Satan's throat.

"So much pain…" his voice rattled through him as Eminescue scrambled to comply.

A wild light flashed with the flames of his irises and Satan howled.

"Where is Yuri? Bring her to me!"

Everything whirled around Rin. He couldn't imagine what Satan was thinking, not when he had rejected Yuri before.

She already seemed to know, staring up at the demons in the farm that scattered and tried to force themselves free as if attempting to escape somewhere despite any efforts to calm them from their panic.

An exorcist told her she was needed at Section Thirteen and Rin knew she had to be aware of what waited for her, then.

Still, what could she do? Rin knew she'd been holding her breath the entire time for the other shoe to drop, an unbearable pressure weighing on her while she waited.

Rin couldn't keep watching the expression on Yuri's face and returned to where Satan appraised his newly healed body after being given the elixir.

Over his shoulder, Eminescue hesitated before speaking. "I must say, you'll develop a resistance with repeated use and they'll stop working."

Somehow, Rin didn't think Satan cared much about that. The future wasn't his concern, or at least he didn't seem to have any kind of goal Rin could understand. But it had been a few years and anything could have happened in the time he'd had to himself away from Yuri.

"Oh," Satan said, bringing Rin back from his thoughts. "Like with him."

A shiver went through Rin as Satan continued. He knew what he would see next then.

"He's the master of this place, right?"

Shock entered Eminescue's expression as Satan ordered him and the other researchers trapped in the room to lead the way to the last place Rin wanted to be.

It was all for Lucifer.

The memory of Mephisto's words went through Rin as if from far away while he forced a shaking hand to use the key to go to the next scene. It was better to rip the bandaid off than deal with the long walk through Section Thirteen. He'd already witnessed so much. His initial determination to see it all wavered with every new scene.

Rin wanted to run. He wanted to stick his head back in the sand. To go to a place where Mephisto complained about Amaimon getting his claws into things he shouldn't and Amaimon played at ignorance in that way Rin knew he knew exactly what he was doing to goad Mephisto.

He wanted to tear through the distance between the past and present and rip Yukio away from Lucifer before he'd even had the chance to scent him out.

When he entered the room it was to see the horde of demons brought by Satan and the humans too deep in Section Thirteen to run, now forced to follow.

Rin didn't think they expected safety from Lucifer, but the alternatives were to die in the hallways like everyone else.

At his side, Mephisto smiled, though no one seemed to pay him any attention, as if he wasn't there at all. He could have been a shadow for all the substance he held, except that his presence burned in Rin's mind, the claim the only thing giving Rin a semblance of stability.

Another should have been at his ppositeopposite side The foundation of histhe claim had become something Rin relied on without realizing until he'd lost it. But, in Amaimon's absence, the dark shroud enveloping Rin like a cloak from Mephisto had to be enough. He stepped closer to Mephisto just to feel the brush of his suit, the heat of his body, and let it be enough.

"Hello," Satan said, sneering at the figure of Lucifer on the bed. "I've been aware of your existence this entire time."

"Your power is second only to mine." His eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

Unwittingly, Rin let his gaze center on Lucifer. His desiccated, miserable form was as terrible as before.

Surrounding Lucifer were three others that prickled along his senses, though they were eclipsed by Lucifer's light. Rin had to fight to see the way the woman flickered beneath it, her aspect almost like the physical flames coming from her crown above a third eye. He had to avert his gaze quickly because she dressed in ways that only pretended at decency, worse than Shura, who Rin had grown desensitized to after repeated exposure. Gauzy fabric nestled over her chest and a thin strip settled between her crossed thighs where she leaned to the side of Lucifer's cot.

Where was her tail? Was it the long, thick black braid with a flame at the end? Rin couldn't fight the burning in his cheeks and hurriedly moved on.

A small figure behind her had an actual octopus for a head and a little sailor suit on his child's body. Rin tried not to let it phase him–it wouldn't be the weirdest thing he'd ever seen. The presence coming from him was like a shadow running over itself in a dark river, as if Rin would get pulled under the surface if he let himself slip.

And the last…

His lips curled over a fang when Rin focused on the sight of a demon with a moldering paper bag covering his head where fungi bloomed from the tears that looked like an expression of abject misery.

The scent of rot and mildew made his nose wrinkle, though not because he hadn't smelled worse. Something about it was familiar and made the flames in his core pulse with a fury he couldn't understand the source of.

"You rage at the most curious things," Mephisto murmured next to him, startling Rin.

Had he been paying attention to Rin that closely?

But, before Rin could say anything, Lucifer spoke.

"I am foremost of the Ba'al," Lucifer rasped from a ruined throat. The black pits in his skull trained on Satan. "I am Lucifer, the king of light."

"And," green lights flared from his eyes, a mouth with lips rotted away moved over brittle fangs, "I bow before you. I am at your service, my lord and father, Satan."

Breath stuck in Rin's chest.

"But as you can see, I am unable to move and of little use."

It was weird, the way Lucifer spoke. Rin couldn't put his finger on it, something about the insanity he'd seen in him and the way he watched Satan raising the hairs on his skin.

It wasn't something Rin could place and Satan couldn't see it, too caught up in his new body, he guessed.

"Please take these others as your attendants," Lucifer said, "they are siblings, and will gladly serve their father."

The way he said that, it felt like Lucifer played directly into the bratty determination Satan had to be king of the universe, a demon god. Even in their first meeting, Lucifer had clocked Satan and stroked the newly formed ego.

Rin wasn't any good at subtlety or mind games, but he always knew when someone was trying to lie to him, could taste it in the air, and it made him angry in ways he'd struggled to deal with his entire life.

Countless times Shiro had tried to calm him down, reminding him that lying wasn't a good reason to lash out at people. Sometimes people told white lies because the truth was too painful or because it was polite or any number of reasons.

He realized then, listening to Lucifer, that Mephisto hadn't lied to him yet.

Laughter burst from Satan and he stabbed a claw at Lucifer. "Excellent! That really cracks me up!"

"I like you, Lucifer."

Rin realized a second thing. That Satan didn't know or didn't care or didn't have the experience to see Lucifer's lies. Possibly, he wasn't aware of anyone's.

"Now listen!" Satan said, addressing everyone in the room. "This research facility is now my castle. I am your king and you are subjects of my realm!"

Again with the evil overlord thing. Rin almost wanted to go back and see if he could give Satan different books. Had Mephisto really tried that route yet?

Scattered words erupted from the humans, fear in them as they tried to understand what Satan meant, what he wanted from them.

Only Eminescue managed to raise his voice amongst the rest. "What do you want from us?"

A smile curled over Satan's face as he glanced back at Eminescue. "Continue your research for me and Lucifer."

Instead of fear, something like relief washed over Eminescue that had Rin frowning. Everyone else was terrified. He could see Neuhaus and his wife in the crowd, other researchers and exorcists shivering, the fear scent almost cloying to Rin's senses. He wanted to chase it away to eliminate the itching in his nose.

Everyone except for Eminescue.

"My rules are simple," Satan said, "obey me and I will protect you."

At that point, Rin could probably have said verbatim what Satan's next words would be. "But if you resist I'll kill you all."

He went to leave the scene and Mephisto tailed him, his expression set in that neutral smile that didn't really tell Rin what he was thinking.

The fear of the humans in the room had been real and their uncertainty and terror at the fragile situation palpable. Still…

"He's really," Rin paused at the door, key outheld, "predictable."

Soft laughter fell from Mephisto. His grin turned wry as he tilted his head as if to consider Rin before bowing forward to take his mouth in an unhurried kiss.

"Your poor father," Mephisto said against his lips. "He may surprise you yet."

"Ok," Rin said, accepting that there were probably a ton of things that could happen he could never predict if he had a thousand years to experience them like Mephisto.

Still, "Could you not talk about him while you're doing that?" Rin grumbled, tugging at Mephisto's bangs and scowling at the unrepentant grin he got for his troubles.

His claws curled to run over the hair caught in his grasp as Rin felt some of the shifting emotions writhing in his chest. He traced the claw of his thumb just beneath Mephisto's eye, watching the slit pupils tracking the movement where one slip would draw blood.

A memory of rot and sourceless rage rose above the rest of the emotions in Rin and he tugged to bring Mephisto down again. Their fangs clacked together until he allowed his to extend and sliced into the lips that had just been caressing mhim.

Immediately, the swirling thoughts quieted and Rin growled against Mephisto, accepting the harsh nips at his own lips that made it easier to breathe despite stealing his breath.

"Here too?" Mephisto said in a rumble, teasing Rin. "Amongst all these terrified humans, your father, Lu-"

He cut himself off, and Rin didn't let him continue, a snarl bubbled under his tongue he wound to Mephisto's and pulled him back in against the door.

"Yeah," Rin finished, growl still on his tongue as he pulled away. "Here too."

His thumb dragged over Mephisto's bottom lip, Rin taking the results of his actions with him and leaving, feeling the heavy gleam of eyes following him from the scene.

The fangs in his mouth refused to recede into something more human.

"Most of the children and staff fled, but Section Thirteen is too deep, so those still there remain trapped."

Rin had entered into another meeting between The Order heads and the Japan branch.

"The workers and test subjects are Satan's hostages. He's demanding food, living necessities, and research materials."

He stood behind Mephisto, hidden beneath his hood as only the Grigori representatives holding their screens and the exorcist reporting the situation to them and Mephisto were present.

It gave Rin a chance to stare at the silk scarf once again around Mephisto's throat. His gaze went there almost without his say, a part of him itching to steal it away. If he took it right under the noses of everyone in the room, Mephisto would have no choice but to ignore it. He had a role to play in the past, but Rin would only cause confusion if people interacted with him, their minds forgetting him almost immediately after. They couldn't even see him with his uniform on in the first place.

His claws twitched, extended on his fingers.

"We're getting inquiries about the barrier breach from all over the country and around the world," Mephisto said, gaze forward. Rin knew his attention was on him, though.

If he shifted, he'd get a sweep of that gaze, like Mephisto watched for what he'd do.

"We can't hide this any longer," Mephisto said as his eyes flicked towards Rin when he'd moved closer in a slow, careful motion.

It looked like he wanted to frown, a slight, bemused crease of his brows breaking the otherwise neutral expression.

Rin smiled beneath his hood and took a final deliberate step into Mephisto's space before, in a deft movement, he stole the scarf from the now bared throat.

"See you later," Rin mouthed the words, letting his smile extend and inhaling into the silk still warmed by body heat as green flared until it ate the slivered pupils in the irises watching him turn away.

"Conceal the situation in Section Thirteen and make a statement regarding the rest." Shemihaza's orders forced Mephisto back into his role and left Rin free to make his exit, scarf swinging in casual flicks of his fingers at his side.

No one made any comments about the missing piece of Mephisto's outfit, apparently none the wiser. It looked like Rin had been right.

A soft rumble reached his ears too low for humans to hear, cut off by the door he shut behind him.

Tents rose up in the area surrounding Rin he'd entered into, an exorcist encampment where they gathered in preparation for battle. It overlooked the entrance to the academy, still strewn with rubble from Satan's invasion.

Around him, confusion and gossip traveled mouth to mouth.

"Satan actually exists?"

"Sir Pheles confirmed it himself."

Rin stared at the two exorcists, wondering at the fact that apparently they had enough faith in Mephisto to believe him when he said the devil walked amongst them. His fingers twisted to the scarf between them before he forced them loose again.

"I still can't believe it–hey, look!" The exclamation brought Rin to see the old woman and the big guy with the fancy braid from the scene with the golem had arrived, drawing the attention of the surrounding exorcists.

"There's Lucy Yang, from the China branch. And Osceola Redarm, from the Mexico branch is here!" More names. Rin told himself he'd remember them. Soon. Third time's the charm, or something like that!

Even Shiro had arrived, not garnering as appreciative of looks as the others, but that was probably because his grouchy attitude could be seen in the way he slouched and scowled at everything.

Their attention soon shifted to the paladin when he arrived and Rin was once again convinced that there was something familiar about the dark features and shaped beard.

"The Order's mobilizing its heavy hitters!"

They were, though Rin didn't think anyone really understood what they were about to face.

His breath caught when a shadow eclipsed him, stalling his thoughts when Mephisto leaned to speak over his shoulder.

"I'll be taking that helicopter ahead. Will you join me in meeting your father?" A hand pressed to the elbow of the arm Rin carried the scarf in, though Mephisto didn't try to steal it back.

He blinked, lips parted on an inhale through extended fangs. Rin moved forward without responding, letting that be answer enough.

Mephisto hummed and followed along while Rin tried not to feel like he was being hunted. The part of him that had called for Rin to take the scarf from Mephisto's throat while he couldn't do a thing about it said they were. That they wanted to be.

That part had grown loud in their time in the past.

Vibrations covered the slow thud of Rin's heart, gaze locked on Mephisto where he sat across from him as they took off. He hadn't bothered strapping in, and neither had Mephisto. Their legs pressed together in the tight space, Rin's hand around the scarf brushing against the knee of the cream colored suit Mephisto wore.

He wasn't giving it back yet.

"Come, Rin," Mephisto called over the buffeting wind and drawing him from the space he'd been in. "Let's make a grand entrance."

At the wide, toothy grin from Mephisto, Rin couldn't help the same one forming on his own face.

They stepped from the helicopter and dropped several stories where they had hovered over the place Satan already waited below.

His cheeks stung with the wind and his own hair whipping at him during his free fall, the tight feeling in his chest loosening as adrenaline poured through him at the sheer height he fell from.

Rin caught sight of Mephisto's grin and laughed, the sound eaten by the wind.

He landed, grin not abating as cracks formed beneath his feet and Mephisto shot him a narrow-eyed stare at the destruction. His own landing had been dramatic, cape flared and knees bent, hands out, the picture of a gymnast sticking a perfect landing and only the displaced air to show he'd stopped his descent.

Well, it wasn't like the grounds hadn't already been pulverized in Satan's invasion, what were a few more additions?

"So you're their messenger, huh?" Satan said with a laugh. "They sent a real weirdo. You're a demon but you side with the humans."

A weirdo? Well, Rin wasn't sure what qualified as weird to Satan, but the more he knew about Mephisto, the more he could say that at least part of that was accurate. Though it wasn't just his clown fashion or the nerdy hobbies he'd picked up in Assiah. Rin might not have met a ton of demons yet, but they all seemed to agree, Mephisto wasn't like them. He didn't do things the same as pretty much every other demon. His goals didn't make sense.

Behind Satan, the other kings stood, and they would probably agree with Satan's analysis of Mephisto, even if the way he said it was childish. Actually it was probably something Rin had said before, saying something about his maturity levels, he was sure. His inner voice was starting to sound a lot like Yukio.

"You seem powerful," Satan said, brushing over his own bratty comment. "Wanna join me?"

Somehow, Rin would guess not.

The smile on Mephisto's face returned to the mask of politeness that Rin was pretty sure was as fake as his deference as he bowed in a flourish.

"I appreciate the invitation, but I am dedicated to the contrary, so I must decline."

Rin's lips twitched in a smile at the unnecessary–though Mephisto would probably disagree–fancy words where a simple "no thanks" would have done the trick.

"No matter," Satan said, unconcerned. "But what about the supplies? I don't see any."

"We will exchange the supplies for the children you're holding hostage," Mephisto demurred, rising from his bow with his hands outspread as if in consolation. "I'm sure you understand."

The pupils in Satan's eyes slivered, narrowing on Mephisto as he registered what he'd said.

A beat passed faster than Rin could follow and power welled like a blade, blue fire cutting a line up towards the helicopter.

Fire and a percussive blast rushed past Rin's ears, his skin heating even at the bottom of the courtyard from the flames Satan had used.

His hair blew in the billowing smoke while Satan laughed at the destruction. "You forget your place, fool!"

Rin didn't feel any of it.

In front of him, blood dripped steadily to the ground, flecking to the cream colored suit every time the wind sent it in another direction. It curved down Mephisto's cheek, the parts of his skin not bleeding still releasing trails of smoke where it had been charred to ruin. Mephisto's tongue slipped upward to trace away some of the blood from his healing wound.

Rin let out an exhale that threatened cinders.

He breathed in and tasted destruction on his tongue.

'Look at me.'

The smoke obscured Mephisto's gaze from Rin, but he knew he hadn't stopped watching Satan, despite Satan having turned from him with a careless demand to return with the supplies or he'd just kill the hostages. With him, the other kings left, barely sparing a glance back before they vanished back into Section Thirteen.

'Mephisto.'

Green flashed his way from the remaining eye on Mephisto's face, the other still carved from his skull by Satan's butchering. With him fully turned towards Rin, he could see it went from one one side to the other, the ozone fire of Satan's attack still staining him with its scent, though it didn't cover the copper tang of blood.

"Ri-" Rin moved before Mephisto could finish, a low snarl rippling through him as he took Mephisto to the ground and huffed for breath. For a scent.

He could smell Satan's power on Mephisto, coating him where Rin's should be.

Cursing came from Mephisto but Rin didn't care as he inhaled into his throat, heedless of the blood heating his skin. He got a hand into Mephisto's hair and pulled his head to each side, a scowl twisting his features into inhuman exaggeration the longer the foreign power refused to leave despite the healing wound.

"Do not use your flames, Rin," Mephisto managed to gasp out, rough as he fought through the hold on him and earning a twist of Rin's hands in his hair, claws digging through the strands to gouge at his scalp and sending an instinctive twin growl from Mephisto in response.

"I'll kill him," Rin stated as if from far away, except that he felt viscerally up close to the blood Satan had drawn down Mephisto's face.

"What–" Mephisto grunted as Rin bore down on him, flames just beneath the skin and holding him more than Rin could accomplish on the physical plane alone. "What happened to 'kicking Satan's ass?'"

Rin shook his head in a harsh jerk, a faint memory coming back to his first meeting with Mephisto where he'd made his promise. "He can't touch you."

A low growl followed his words, Rin's gaze darting to the deep impression of the wound still open on Mephisto. His tongue followed, tracing the outer edges of the ruin and earning him a stiffening of Mephisto's body.

"Mng, Rin," came the slightly breathless exhale of his name. "This is the past, remember? You can't ch-ah-change things. This has already happened!"

Heat hissed from his throat over Mephisto's cheek where he breathed in shuddering pants, fighting to keep from loosing the flame in his core where it churned molten fury.

In his fist, the silk scarf he'd stolen twisted until the threads threatened to rip, the fabric further sullied by the dust and grit he'd pressed it into besides Mephisto's head. The tangles of his purple hair matted with blood, though it had begun to dry into a sticky mess that darkened the strands.

He rumbled a growl of irritation, then ducked to lave his tongue in broad sweeps to clear the blood before it dried, ignoring the huff of breath from Mephisto to curl over his brows, the bridge of his nose, the dip of his lips, chasing his taste until Rin could cover the foreign scent of Gehenna flame that had gouged a path over it.

"Mine," he said to the lips that parted for him to steal his way inside, grinding down at the same time.

Only when he had the foreign scent–foreign power–off of Mephisto could he tolerate the sight of Satan again.

His hips continued their rough grind to Mephisto until his clothes grew uncomfortably tight. The fabric of his uniform spread around them to cover Mephisto from whoever might be looking, having fallen there with his tackle. Rin's hood shadowed Mephisto from above, their faces lit by the blue glow of flame in Rin's eyes.

Good. All he could see was Rin.

The rest of the world–the Order, the exorcists, Satan–didn't matter. Not when he had Mephisto's full attention.

"If he touches you again I'll-" Rin cut himself off, panting into the crux of Mephisto's shoulder as his grip clenched in a spasm, imagining Mephisto swept up in blue flames that didn't belong to him, imagined his claim buried under a tidal wave of blue he couldn't stop.

"You'll what, Rin?" Mephisto said in a heavy voice against his ear. He could feel fangs there and a hint of lips curved in a smile.

Rin groaned against the throat in his view, eyes screwed shut when Mephisto arched against him to press them flush together as if Rin hadn't already been doing his best to meld them into one being.

As if to taunt him further, his position put him closer to the scent of foreign flame on Mephisto and Rin hissed, mind working furiously to think of a way to cover it that didn't involve him searing the top layer of skin and Mephisto's sullied clothes away.

He let his fangs clasp to the artery in Mephisto's neck and the answer came to him, sending Rin pulling away despite the claws trying to keep him in place.

Before Mephisto could do anything more past his noise of complaint, Rin shredded his uniform, not caring about the useless buttons and zippers in his way, to expose his skin. A second pass sent shudders down his frame, breaths heaving from his chest as Rin panted at the sting of his own claws raking down his torso.

Blood followed the ragged tears, spilling down his front and sending Rin groaning as he fell back over Mephisto to bite at his lips.

Already, he could feel himself healing, but the growing red stained Mephisto's suit until the cream color was swallowed by it and a rumble of approval went through Rin. He nearly couldn't pick up the scent anymore.

"If he touches you again," Rin said, lips tracing at the tapered point of Mephisto's ear, picking up his earlier statement, thoughts swimming in a pool of instinct except for that one, clear thing he couldn't let go. "I'll make him wish he'd never formed an ego and left Gehenna in the first place."

A gasp echoed his words before Mephisto managed to respond, heat filling his eyes as they dilated until only a ring of color glowed at the edges.

"Go ahead, Rin. Stake your claim," came the breathy moan from Mephisto, his claws dragging over his shoulders and down to his hips where he gripped until the force of it bruised.

Pleasure swelled up with the pain and Rin jerked forward in his place between Mephisto's thighs, mind a haze of 'he's mine, he's mine, he's mine.' His blood rushed in his ears, under his tongue where he dragged it over the thudding pulse in the artery he mouthed at until the skin reddened and bruised under his onslaught.

Mephisto's body welcomed him in each pulse of their claim and Rin chased the heat coiling in his gut, clothes damp with his blood and the pre-cum beginning to make a growing patch.

"Good, Rin, Good-hah!" The words streaming from Mephisto halted in a keen as Rin sank his fangs in deep, hearing the choked gasp as he moaned into the welling blood from the throat in his hold.

The claws at his hips pulled him in a long grind and Mephisto came, moaning, his voice stuttered by Rin's refusal to release his throat so that he felt the vibrations through his teeth.

Around them the claim welled, following the heat tightening in Rin until the climax broke through him and he joined Mephisto.

He didn't stop rolling his hips, every wave of pleasure making him heavier until he sank into Mephisto and heaved a shuddering breath before stilling. His weight settled on Mephisto, the hot blood Rin had shed sticking to his skin where he'd collapsed and shivered intermittently.

Where his bared skin pressed, the now ruined suit had rubbed raw, though it healed the longer Rin lay there. He idly wondered if he would heal with bits of Mephisto in him, their blood mingled as much as the rest of their bodies.

In the steady silence, rational thought began to trickle back to Rin. Enough to know his previous mental state had been less than rational in the first place.

Rin shifted, fangs returning to normal and not the bestial wedges he'd used to keep Mepphisto in place while he scent marked him–like some kind of animal–as he drew back with a long breath to see what state Mephisto was in.

It was to see Mephisto with a wry smile fighting at the corners of his mouth, almost hidden by the mock affront he wore. He'd propped himself up on his elbows as much as Rin sitting on him would allow, the front of his body bloodstained

"Im–" The word stuck in his throat, Rin licking at his lips and realizing he couldn't say he was sorry. He wasn't, despite the part of him that screamed at their very public display of affection. The other part was louder. The one that said he would pull Mephisto right back down if he even detected a hint of Satan's scent anywhere left on his body.

Claws pressed at his cheeks, dimpling the skin as Mephisto directed his attention back. "You seem bound and determined to strip me of every decency I have."

A snort left Rin and he prodded Mephisto in return. "I don't think you ever had any. No one's buying the gentleman thing, you know."

Mephisto's wry grin finally cracked through his facade and he let his thumb trail over the drying blood where it had made sluicing paths down Rin's stomach. The touch sent his muscles quivering and a throb of heat he quickly stifled before he wound up pressing Mephisto down again.

"Brat of an imp," Mephisto said with a fond quirk of his lips before dropping his hand to drag it through his matted hair. "Well? Are you satisfied with yourself?"

"Yeah," Rin mumbled, pouting as he rose and had to resist the urge to let his flames out because the feeling of his clothes sticking to his skin had just made itself known.

"Clean me up?" he said as he pulled Mephisto to his feet and smiled when he straightened himself out as if it would help the picture he made.

Narrowed eyes flashed at him as Mephisto responded through a toothy grin. "I should make you go through the next few bits like this. You'll think twice before debauching me without divesting us of our clothes first, hm?"

"Hah!" Rin tossed his head back and stalked into Mephisto's space to grip at the drenched suit lapels, dragging him closer. His nose pressed to the skin he'd just cleaned with his tongue and Rin inhaled, satisfied to find only himself on Mephisto.

"I'll just find you in the next one and do it all over again," he purred. "Then we'll both be like this."

Snapping came and Rin found himself gripping a newly restored suit, his own repaired and back in place.

Mephisto's eyes gleamed as he settled his gloved hands to Rin's and ducked closer.

"Go along, Rin," he said, gaze hooded. "On to the next scene before my lovely exorcists arrive to see you groping me so shamelessly.

He released his hold on Rin and stepped away with a wave.

"See ya," Rin gave a sloppy salute as he left, a grin on his lips as he pulled the silk scarf still in his hand to his nose.

The door he'd gone through closed on him, and it was only then that Rin registered that his chest swam with a feeling he couldn't place. Like he teetered between extremes, unsettled.

Rin frowned and clung tighter to the scarf in his hand.

End Notes: Hope you guys liked the first chapter since the hiatus XD I'll try to have the next one out sooner than 4 years . but this whole year has been a nightmare so I might take a bit longer, but u guys are used to waiting at this point right :`)

Also, about the key and how it works. I'm pretty sure Rin determines where it takes him even if it's Mephisto's key, but Rin wouldn't know that lol Tho I'm betting if Mephisto really wants to he can stop all his keys from working or interfere with them. It's one of those hard-to-say things about canon until we actually see it happen.